In Her Calipers
by SpankingHalo
Summary: Dragon and Matthew across the Obernewtyn series; a three-part story tracing their connections and their relationship in all its complexity and tragedy.
1. The Isle Is Full Of Noise

Well, I was midway through part two of _A Breath of Demons_ when I got side-tracked. This is the result. It's the first of a three-part story for which I have the other two parts mostly written. I'd love any feedback! Thank you to the lovely people who were kind enough to give me feedback on my first Obernewtyn fic – thank you **F., fictitious character, jess.stretch** and the fabulous **Franklet**,.

**Summary: **A tale of Dragon and Matthew and the connections which draw them together throughout the Obernewtyn chronicles; Alice in her Wonderland.

**In Her Calipers**

_Be not afeard: the isle is full of noises_

Between sea and sky, she is created: a mermaid in cream and fire.

The tide throws her onto the beach with uncaring hands, the only mother she will know for years to come –

the lapping waves beat in time with her own heart, the sand beneath her pliant as skin. For time beyond measure, she lies huddled on the shore, her hair splayed like seaweed over her face.

Her life begins in foam and wonder. She does not know that she is lost, or that she is alone, only that the air is soft and the sky is vast and that water is dangerous.

She hears music drifting from far away, where the sea is deep and full of secrets. That sweet, sad lullaby brings a knot to her throat. Her eyes burn and when she touches them, they are damp because there is something about the bittersweet blue of the sky and the eerie siren song that draws tears from her.

Salt water falls into salt water: she sheds her tears without understanding why, and when they are gone, she is left empty as a seashell. But she cannot stay forever. Sails appear on the horizon, dark shapes that strike fear into her. She does not question it. Nothing but instinct remains to her – she flees the advancing tide and all that is borne upon it, leaving only the imprint of her feet on the sand.

When the tide recedes, even that is gone.

X - X - X - X - X

_In other years I would say, how lucky we are__  
The people inside our house  
But luck has not bought us mercy_

"Hush, mam," Matthew says, wiping the cloth over her brow. She is so hot: it's as if a fire has been stoked to diabolical magnitude inside her. He tries to sound calm, tries to be an adult. But he's scared and he's lonely and for the first time in his life she can't hear him.

He tries again, fingers light on her temples. _Mam, can you hear me?_

Her mind is an impenetrable mess of heat haze and hallucinations. All his life, he's been able to reach his mother as easily as if she possessed some part of his heart. Where others could find only silence, she found laughter and stories. Even her anger and her disappointment are loud – blistering tirades about his folly, all voice and hands and expression. His mother is a whirlwind and he loves her fiercely. She cannot endure silence.

Nor can she endure the illness that wracks her.

Since she was caught out in the snow a week ago, she has not been the same. A sniffle became a cold, a cold became a cough, the cough became fever.

He is horribly afraid that the fever will become deadly.

That night, he begs his neighbour to watch his mother. He can tell she wants to refuse, but even her suspicion cannot withstand the pathetic sight of his mother shuddering in the blankets.

Wrapped up in his threadbare coat, he struggles through the drifts to the next village. The cold claws at him: he wills his leaden feet to lift (_next-step-next-step)_, spluttering away flurries of snow that are dashed in his face. When the first bright lights glimmer up ahead, he nearly weeps.

The Herb Lorist is kind, a round woman with doughy hands and shrewd eyes. He sees her expression when he describes the symptoms – it cuts the ground from under him, and he falls. She puts it down to exhaustion, to his bad leg.

He can't tell her that he's seen the future in her eyes, and it's a dank hole in the earth, filled only by his mother.

She gives him packages that smell green and fresh, and instructions that he scribbles down. Then he goes back out into the merciless night, slogging back down the road (_next-step-next-step _like a prayer in his mind). He slips, he plunges into a pot hole, he grits his teeth and stoops into the howling wind because he will not be stopped.

He hurries down the last stretch, the pain in his leg sharp and taut. Gold light halos the door; he kicks it opens, words on his lips.

And he stops. There are strangers in the room. A Herder intones words while his apprentice sprinkles ashes over the bed. His neighbour is sat where he left her, but the sheet is drawn over his mother's face - _why have they done that? _he thinks, s_he can't breathe – _and when she says, "Matthew, lad, she's gone...", he knows that must be wrong.

The herbs tumble from his hands – he tramples them, and the scent of summer fights the scent of death in this room full of ashes as he staggers to the bed and tears back the sheet over the Herder's protest.

Oh Lud, she is so warm, so still, surely sleeping. He puts his fingers to her temples, not caring that it confirms the gossip, the whispers of _Misfit_, and he reaches out, because that part of his heart which is hers still beats, so surely he would know if she were dead.

_Mam…_

His call echoes out into nothing, and nothing, and the truth hits him like a fist to the gut.

She is gone. There is only the sound of winter, beating on the roof like the ocean, and stretching out through the darkness of the doorway, the pattern of his feet which the snow is slowly, remorselessly filling in.

When morning breaks, and the village boys come to tease him about his freakish mother, he doesn't care that they are ignorant of her death. He has no remorse for all that follows, for the anger and the pain that he unleashes on them.

It sets him on his way to Obernewtyn, though he does not know that yet. By the time the moon has changed, he has nothing left but his name and his secret.

And that hollow inside his heart, waiting to be filled.

X - X - X - X - X

_And there I found myself more truly and more strange_

Darkness becomes her closest friend. She moves from shadow to shadow, not caring if thorns prick at her skin or leaves itch in the close cover of a thicket. Without question, she obeys her instincts: she has no memories to guide her so she is dependent on the whispers of her body and her base, animal senses.

The first time she hears voices on the road, the fear nearly paralyses her. Something flickers in her mind – not quite memory, but the ravenous ghost of it (_crimson and metal, his smile opening like a trap...)_, and then it is gone and she darts into the trees. Flattened against an oak, she breathes hard and trembles. The noises they make are loud on the quiet air, and as foreign to her as safety.

"_No, no, it's up here somewhere – Traveller's Rest, it's called and they draw the finest ale for miles around-"_

"_And I'm telling you, The Crossroads has the finest wenches for miles around! I'd sooner have a girl than a glass-"_

"_Why not have both? The rest it's talking about ain't sleep, you know-"_

Their laughter is raucous, full of hunger. She dares not move in case they see her. But the treacherous wind has other ideas – she hears a shout, and suddenly a man's hat sails past her. The sound of hooves turns towards her, and panic is a fever in her veins.

She runs, like any scared animal.

And like any hunter, they chase. The hullabaloo of their voices follows her through the trees, the crash of hooves ever nearer, and she's all heartbeat and motion, nothing left but fear.

A blow sends her crashing to the ground. She wails as she's hauled to her feet.

He's immense, looming over her in the dark. His smile is bright and cruel, and his nails dig into her arm like teeth.

"_What have we here? Nikolaus, come and see this pretty little scrap!"_

Then one becomes two; she is fenced between them, gasping for air.

"_Well now...the Herders would pay us a fine price for the likes of her. That hair – those eyes. She's a rare find, and you know they like rare things..."_

"_Aye, they like to break them. Still. These are hard times. I'll not turn down the coin."_

She cannot understand their words, but when one hunkers down, she knows he is lying because his tone is soft and soothing, but his eyes are savage. _"There now, little one. Are you lost? We'll take care of you."_

She tries to dart between them, but their legs are like bars of a cage, and a fist sends her spinning into a tree. She's dazed and terrified and alone, and their faces seem to be overlaid with another – one thin and feral, all smiles and lies like them, and she feels something wake inside her. She grabs for it blindly-

Something ripples into existence between them, a vast, monstrous shape that rears onto its hind legs, spreads its wings and _roars_...

And suddenly it's them screaming, their faces contorted with fear. She sends the winged creature crashing after them, its eyes gold and enormous as the sun. When it springs into the air to pursue them down the road, and its scales gleam the same red as her hair, she understands it is part of her. She makes it wheel and dance in the air, awed that anything so strange and so beautiful can come from her.

She has no name for it, or for herself. It doesn't matter. When she makes it vanish, that doesn't matter either, because she can feel it there still, burning in her heart like hope.

After that, she leaves the road, but she doesn't need the darkness anymore. She has something better.

X - X - X - X - X

_In my dream I'm a lost child_

Obernewtyn isn't what he expected. Despite the imposing splendour of the building, it's not filled with the freaks and the monsters that he feared. The work is hard, but the meals are good and the air is fresh and invigorating. His leg aches less and less with each day, and to his surprise, so does his heart.

Matthew even makes friends. There's Dameon, who seems quiet and gentle until he pierces your heart with a few words. Later, Matthew learns why that is: Dameon knows just where to push the knife, because his blind eyes see emotion with a precision that is astounding and a little frightening. Only when he sees Dameon flinch back from anger does Matthew realise that his gift pains him as much as it benefits him.

Cameo is a fairytale princess, delicate and sweet and timid. Her smiles are a talisman against all that Matthew dislikes about Obernewtyn – the dark tunnels where no light enters, the vastness of the courtyard at night (when moonlight spears the flagstones and throws sinister shadows across the walls), and the people who have secrets bitten behind their smiles.

Ariel. Madame Vega. Rushton. There are others, but those three carry danger like a scent on them.

Nonetheless, he finds a sort of balance there, and from time to time, he sends out his mind, calling softly in the dark of the night in case anyone is listening. No one answers, and he feels his loneliness most acutely then. Sleep is his only escape.

His dreams are full of symbols, and some of them have the feel of truth. The moon hovers over them all, a white, vast cataract. He sees a bird circling over its surface, though sometimes its shape seems distorted – the body thinner, the wings ragged. At other times, it is a girl beneath the moonlight, still and pale as marble, and he cannot tell whether she is asleep or dead. Her hair is red, black, blonde. Her face is gentle, proud, fierce, empty. She changes like the phases of the moon, but her eyes are always closed.

When he wakes, he can barely remember these fragments. Life goes on and the oddness of life in Obernewtyn becomes normal.

One day, he kisses Cameo under the cherry trees. It's clumsy and gentle, and it makes him happy. He ignores the feeling that it isn't quite right, that he's still waiting for something. His dreams are making him uneasy, that's all.

Then Elspeth Gordie comes, and he realises he's seen her face under the baleful moon.

He knows at once what she is. There's an echo about her, just as there was with his mother. She's prouder and colder, prickly as a rosebush. But he admires the directness of her green eyes and the bite in her voice whether she speaks aloud or silently. Her mind is a fortress, battlements and weaponry. He fears her as much as he likes her.

But he has someone to talk to. The world is a little less empty.

When Matthew knows her better, he realises she has a love of danger. That explains a lot about her and Rushton, he always thinks.

Elspeth comes: danger comes with her. She's all ferocity and hope, and she makes Matthew believe that life can be more than this. He plans escape and for a while, he honestly thinks it will happen. They can save Cameo. They'll live free again.

The mountains have the golden haze of the promised land.

Then Cameo dies. The fairytale shatters before him. While he's still trying to piece it all together, the revolution happens, and he's left gasping and astounded as the whole world changes and rolls forward like a glacier. In the flush of victory, Cameo is a detail.

He isn't alone anymore. He can send out his mind and hear a dozen answers from people who were too cowed or too wary to answer him before. But another piece of his heart is gone, buried with a princess who will never be woken by something as trivial as a kiss.

He has a home. But his nights are still saturated with a girl sleeping under the moon; now her hair is always red, and she always lies in the shadow of wings. He doesn't know what it means. He doesn't know why she haunts him. So he daydreams of better things – heroes and great deeds, days of sunlight and joy.

It isn't enough.

X - X - X - X - X

Thank you for reading! I would love to hear any comments and criticism you have.

**Author's Note: **The quotes which begin each section are taken from the following:

- Act III, Scene ii, The Tempest  
- The Metronomic Moon, Michael Young  
- Tea at the Palaz of Hoon, Wallace Stevens  
- 100 Love Poems, Pablo Neruda


	2. Caesar's I Am

Thank you Jess for the lovely review!

**In Her Calipers****  
**

Noli me tangere, _for Caesar's I am,  
And wild for to hold though I seem tame_

In the ruins, she finds a home of a sort. She likes the crumbling walls and the emptiness that others might find eerie. The purity of the silence tells her that she is safe, secure. She is alone here as she was beside the sea that spat her out.

Her nomadic life has taught her how to forage, but in this arid place, food is scarce. Nonetheless, she will not leave it. Too many dangers wait beyond it, men with smiles like the lying moon, hands that want to tangle her like seaweed.

In her solitude and her silence, she is peaceful. She scrabbles through the library when she is bored, plucking inspiration from the pictures there. The rigid lines of words like soldiers mean nothing to her, except that she knows in some innate way that they are dangerous. There can be no lies without words, after all.

So she spends her days in a quiet haze, disturbed only by the grumble of hunger in her stomach. She becomes pared down and slender as a knife, all edges and gleam. Her illusions fill the air as she amuses herself, creating a series of the grotesque and the dazzling.

On the rare occasions that anyone comes near, she sends her creations raging against them, and they are soon gone.

Sometimes, she thrashes in her sleep. Her dreams are full of motion, of anger and fear and the snarl of an ocean in storm-tossed fury. Only occasionally are they broken by something else – a flash of sun-darkened skin, a certain quizzical expression, scarred knuckles and a great stillness beneath golden light. She never remembers them.

So she exists, wordless and fearless, in her sanctuary. Her dreams are nothing more than what she casts upon the air.

It never occurs to her that it cannot last.

X - X - X - X - X

_But we must go_  
_Though yet we do not know  
Who called, or what marks we shall leave upon the snow_

He can feel the world changing, slowly but surely, like water eroding stone. Matthew marks it in the people around him, in how easily they adjust. Rushton assumes leadership like a crown, and if he is somewhat sterner, if he feels the weight of it hard upon his neck, he is fair and capable too.

The others form around him like a court. Roland is savage in his demands, yet twice as gentle with his patients, and most of his vitriol is frustration at being unable to do more (there's a hunger in him to cure the world, and Matthew thinks it might be a little dangerous because he knows what is to want something impossible. His mother and Cameo are fading away, sepia memories that he cannot cling to however hard he tries).

Maryon is enigmatic, icy, sweeping into Guildmerge like the North Wind carrying the future on it. And yet the Futuretelling guild is full of colour – beautiful tapestries that belie their diffident façade.

In Garth, Matthew glimpses something of Elspeth's curiosity, and his own. They get along, swapping theories about the Beforetime laced with romantic interpretations. Under that bulk, Garth is pure idealism.

Gevan is dark and sharp as nettles, although his smiles and his laughter take the sting from his words. But Matthew never forgets that Gevan could make him do anything he wanted (_jump off a cliff, bare his neck to a wolf's slavering jaws, kill...)_, so he cannot help but be a little wary.

And then there is Dameon and Elspeth.

Matthew isn't too blind to see that they are two corners of the triangle where Rushton forms the apex. There is an odd kind of bond between the three, and with a sense of sadness, he realises that the pair of them are drifting further from him.

Elspeth wears no crown, only the tattered cloak of her legend, but she's as proud and stern as Rushton, and their arguments are already becoming explosive. The air fairly crackles anytime the two of them are in a room, and everyone else becomes mere background. The rumour mill grinds on, but very quietly, because no one wants to be confronted by the Farseeker Guildmistress's acerbic tongue, or - worse – Rushton's cool and unflinching request for an explanation.

Only Daemon can calm the pair of them. He is the eye of the storm, a centre of tranquillity in Obernewtyn; people flock to him, love him, and Matthew cannot blame them. Instead, he steps back, recognising that other people need his friend more.

And so in this brave new world, he moves into the shadows. Oh, he's the ward, and he has a dozen routine tasks to do, but even Ceirwan comes between him and Elspeth. The great deeds he dreamed of have not materialised. His loneliness returns, and when the mission to the old library is suggested, he fights for the chance to go.

And he finds himself daydreaming of the Misfit, so strange and so powerful, who he will help find. He will be part of the great discovery; more than humdrum duties and the minutiae of Guildmerge.

That night, he dreams of the girl so still under the moon, and feels the thrill of prophecy.

X - X - X - X - X

_Little one, you've kept the heart of poverty in you_

The ride to Obernewtyn is long and fascinating. The tall, stern woman who carries herself with such confidence has given her a name: _Dragon._ It tastes right in her mouth.

When they try to force her into water, she screams and screams. She cannot tell them why: even though there are no lies in the eyes of the elderly woman who scrubs her down, Dragon cannot bring herself to trust the water.

They stare at her when she comes in, and she feels their shock like cold fingers on her skin. It is greatest of all from the boy with the brown eyes who has been so kind, and for a moment when she looks at him, she feels a glimmer of recognition (_what would he look like under a burning sun, what will he be when the years have moulded him?)_

Then it passes, leaving her confused and fearful. The wonder in their eyes is alien to her: it's close enough to the hunger of those men in the woods, years ago, that she wants to run.

Later, when they show her a girl with long, curling red hair and blue eyes, Dragon gasps and reaches out. When her fingers brush glass, she realises it's her.

She is beautiful. It means nothing to her. Instead, she fills the mirror with illusions so that they will see that she is useful, that they can't abandon her. When they shout and laugh, she knows it was a good decision.

X - X - X - X - X

_Love, how often I loved you without seeing,  
Without remembering you,  
Not recognising your glance_

"I cannae get rid of her," he exclaims, rubbing a hand through his hair. "Even my shadow doesnae stick as close to me."

"Your shadow has less need of you," Dameon points out gently. "Dragon is still learning, Matthew. She understands more than she is able to explain, and that frustrates her. You have a knack for understanding her-"

"And she has a knack for irritating me!"

He slumps into a chair opposite his friend, who has an amused smile. "Matthew, you hardly discouraged her."

He cannot tell Dameon about his dream. He dreamed of Cameo too, and she died. He dreamed of Elspeth, who lies in the Healer Guild now, recovering from a knife to the head. If Elspeth isn't dead yet, it's either luck or sorcery, because he's never met anyone else who courts death like a lover.

"She needed looking after," Matthew mutters.

"She still does."

"Then you look after her," he says shortly. "She just sits an' stares at me. I cannae sit down without her bringing me tea or food or trinkets."

Dameon chuckles. "What hardship you endure."

"I need to get away from her," he snaps. "She's a child."

Dameon's blind eyes were upon him, and his face was solemn. "Is that really what you think?"

He glares across the hall, where Dragon is listening to Lina and Zarak, undoubtedly relating some lurid tale of their exploits. She bursts into laughter, the sound fierce and unfettered, and in her abandon he sees a girl who knows nothing of how to hold back, nothing of civility.

"Yes."

She sees him staring: for a long moment, their eyes lock and the room constricts. He breaks the glance, and hurries from the room before she can approach. In his haste, he misses Dameon's soft parting comment:

"Then you're a fool."

X - X - X - X - X

_O, cast me from your hand_  
_That I may show my love for you  
And throw me to the wind  
That I may know my need for you_

She has watched him for years. She has idolised him, as others idolise the fantasies she weaves upon the air. But that passed, and she began to see beneath her image of him. The golden façade peeled away like gilt, and slowly, his flaws took shape before her.

She knows Matthew. She cannot form the words to say so, because language is still something she hammers together like a child. Dragon despises lies, and all that flickers in her animal core at the thought (_that smile opening like a trap) _and so she speaks as simply and as truthfully as possible. Her speech is not ornate or stuffed with needless words.

But that isn't how these people communicate. Inevitably, any attempt she made to explain to him would be clumsy and mistaken, and so it has been: she says _love_ and he hears _worship_.

He is her language – she could speak him with her hands, if he'd let her. Her heart is fluent in his idiosyncrasies and his cruelties.

She doesn't love him for his kindness or his courage or his valour. She loves him for the way he scowls at paperwork and the sudden tilt of his head when he questions someone's opinion, and the rasp of his Highland accent. She loves him because he is unstoppable in his romantic notions, a veritable force of nature that drives others to exasperation and laughter. He calls to the part of her that thrills at fairytales and myths.

She loves him because she sees the sadness in his eyes sometimes, and he never speaks of it. His complaints are extravagant, but always trivial – the heat of the day, the herbs in the food, mud and rain. Whatever is in Matthew's heart, he keeps it concealed.

He fascinates her. Because she knows how he hates her staring, she has learned the tricks of subterfuge. She glimpses him in the gaps between bodies, in the reflection of a dish or in her peripheral vision. In those rare moments where he looks at her, she looks back and hopes he can see more than the savage plucked from the ruins of a dead world.

He never does.

So desperation drives her to utter words he thinks she cannot comprehend – words like _love _and _need _and _you_ – and rejection drives her to tears. It hurts, and she thinks that surely she must be mistaken, that this can't be love, this thorny, complex thing.

But it is. It does not pass. It does not fade. And it does not blind her.

In his anger, she sees fragments of his ghosts. She cannot puzzle out the whole of it, but his grief swamps her sometimes, breaking on her like the ocean, rousing an echo of something fleeting (_mother?)_ and quickly forgotten.

His prejudice is tiresome. Time and again, she tries to push past it, as she does with everyone. He isn't the only one, just the most important one.

With many, she failed. But sometimes, she succeeded. Back at Obernewtyn, Lina would hug her and whisper secrets: she at least, knew that Dragon understood more than she could express. In the quiet refuge of Dameon's rooms, Dragon could speak to him in emotions as well as her awkward words, and he answered in the same, so they conversed heart to heart.

"Give him time," he said gently. "He has lost so much that I think he fears to lose again."

She wanted to say that Matthew was close to losing her too, but it wasn't true. Hope still spurred her on.

"Dragon love Matthew," she whispered back, and sent with it a wave of emotion. "Matthew too stupid to love Dragon."

His laughter was soft. "They are blinder than me, these people who don't know love when they see it," he agreed, and she felt his own sorrow.

She thinks on those words when she follows Matthew to Sutrium. She clings hard to them when he turns upon, vicious, and knifes her once again with his words and his cruelty.

She weeps, and she hates him for a little while - this blind stupid man who romanticises everyone except her.

X - X - X - X - X

Thanks for reading! Comments and criticism adored.

**Author's Notes: **The quotes at the start of each segment are taken from the following:

Whoso List To Hunt - Thomas Wyatt  
The Call - Charlotte Mew  
Sonnet XXIX - Pablo Neruda  
Sonnet XXII - Pablo Neruda  
The Falcon To The Falconer - Jonathan Steffen


	3. The Pilgrim Soul

Many thanks to the very wonderful people who reviewed the last (long-ago) part. Thank you: , the darkerexplanation, theladyisatiger, and Morgana101. I adore hearing what you think - thank you so much!

**In Her Calipers**

_nothing which we are to perceive in this world  
equals the power of your intense fragility_

Because of his ignorance, Dragon lies in a sleep so deep it is nearly death.

Suspended as she is in some misty limbo between life and death, Matthew recognises her at last. The truth comes to him like an old friend: sleeping beauty, waiting on true love's kiss. How often has he dreamt of her? She is the girl beneath the moon, white and still and chilled by its light. He has been blind and worse, a fool.

He has lost so many people: his mother, Cameo, the girl that was Elspeth before she became so cold and proud. He cannot lose her too.

The fear of it hangs about him like stale smoke; Dragon haunts him. Rooms echo without the bright tangle of her hair, the sky is but a cruel mirror of her eyes. It is as if his shadow is gone, and he can no longer tell whether he walks in daylight or darkness. He sees now all that he was too stubborn to notice before: her bravery, her passion, and her dignity beneath his callousness, and Matthew is ashamed.

He had not thought her worthy – and all the while, she had grown and changed while he stagnated. The barely-human creature they had drawn from the ruins would have run from the soldierguard; Dragon had seen the danger, and understood it, and still faced the blades because what was right mattered more to her than what was easy.

"I'm sorry," he whispers in that small room where she cannot hear. There is a hollow under his ribs, an ache he cannot quell. "I were wrong. 'Tis I who am not worthy of ye."

He will be better. And he will begin now.

X - X - X - X - X

_Reality is like an urn that's cracked  
And cannot hold its shape; and very soon  
Its rotten shards will shatter like a storm_

Pain drives her into the dreaming. She takes wing and soars away into the labyrinthine depths of her own mind where no one may follow. For seconds or years or eternity, she is only the sum of her senses; nothing but the beat of wings and the heat glancing from scales and the thunder of her hunger. There is a fortress far below where some other part of her exists, but she ventures there as little as she can.

She passes through a citadel of dreams, searching for something – someone – though she does not know why. Anger drives her. There are no other thoughts, only this insatiable need (_he loves me not - then let him burn)_.

Faces wheel by. The mermaid might have known them: the beast knows only itself.

She hunts. Sometimes she sees something that sends her roaring with rage (_there he is – burn him, burn him)_ but it is only ever a shadow, a lie. Though she does not know it, she travels through the dreams of others, still searching, still lonely.

And then, one day, she is invaded. Songs soothe her; they call the dragon down into the fortress, and wake memory with it. Her past opens up before her – and she is a child again.

It all unfurls – the bright, beautiful gardens, the chatter of animals, the man with a smile like a trap. She tries to stop it, but cannot – something is different, _someone_ is here and they will not release her.

Her mother dies before her in a flood of blood, and Dragon screams at the merciless world as she is snatched away. The waves overwhelm her; it is all grey and cold and choking spray, washing her clean...

She cannot bear it. It is too much. She thrusts the pain away, cages it and buries it, and rises from the dreaming which has become as painful as the world she fled. She emerges as blank as an eggshell into a room where a cat is asleep in her hair, and she does not know her own name again.

The sea has birthed her once more. But this time, she knows that something is missing, because her heart is still broken. This time, she is not grateful to forget.

X - X - X - X - X

_We have lingered in the chambers of the sea  
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown  
Till human voices wake us, and we drown_

His old life recedes with the Land. It clings to the horizon, a thin line that is one day gone, and that is the day that he is whipped.

The voyage has been a haze of drugs and shouting. The shackles on his wrist have chafed his skin raw, and the violent storms have left his stomach feeling much the same. Matthew does not speak much: none of them do. It only invites trouble.

The hold is dark and reeking of too many bodies in too little space. The only light come from the three portholes, and each day, Matthew hoists himself up to watch the world he knows fade a little further. He tries not to despair. He has done the right thing for the right reason.

He tries not to despair, but Lud it is so hard.

They are taken up onto the deck once a day to shamble around. He keeps his head down, all too aware that Ariel is close by. His hands clench and unclench: visions of Cameo as she was at the end, translucent, brittle, dying, haunt him. And her face always becomes Dragon, silent in sleep, a prisoner in her own body.

_Cattle_, the slavers call them. One girl slips in front of Ariel – her flailing hand catches his boot. His lips curl back and he says, with icy meaning, "Deal with her."

A slaver yanks her chains: they hoist her wrists over her head, and the first kick cracks into her ribs.

Her scream sends rage through Matthew. He doesn't think: he acts, manacled fists clubbing into the slaver with a ferocity he didn't know he possessed. The sound of his head hitting the deck is immensely satisfying.

His victory is brief. They chain him to the mast, and the whip comes whistling across his back. He tries to count – one, two, three, pain, pain, pain – but the numbers slide away, time slides away. At some point, he passes out, his back a raw mess. He thinks they might toss him overboard, thinks he might die, but instead he wakes in the hold, moans slurring through his lips.

And that is how he comes to the Land of the Red Queen: bleeding, battered, barely alive.

X - X - X - X - X

_Though they go mad they shall be sane,  
Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again_

The need to know drives her back into dreams. Each night, Dragon slides onto those dangerous paths, which are familiar. Each place she visits sparks memories: of flight, of churning emotions, of the beast that she was.

Her explorations are tentative. Sometimes Maruman deigns to show her the paths, muttering that he has _no time to keep teaching foolish funaga who can't even keephold of one little memory / truth. _

In truth, she is more at home here than in Obernewtyn, where they expect her to _know_ things. A girl called Lina chatters to her about conversations they once had and is always disappointed when Dragon cannot remember. She is frightened by Elspeth (_Innle_, the beasts call her, but Dragon knows they are not quite right – she is _Invader, one-who-makes-memory_).

One night, inevitably, Dragon returns to the sea. The sight of it, a dream sea that glitters and twinkles, sends a shaft of fear through her which is forked and fierce as lightning. But she does not flee: here is some part of her answer. Here is the past, in the gritty sand between her toes, in ghostly sails that cut the horizon like a shark's fin.

She steps into the water. It is cold enough to make her gasp and the spray tastes like tears on her lips. She licks them clean: and it brings back a memory. Blood on the water – and _her_.

"Mami?" she whispers, and the past rises over her like a wave, subsuming the light, a vast dark wall.

It crashes down – and she is knocked to her knees, fingers knotted in her hair as she screams under the weight of the truth. Sensations befuddle her – the lush smell of flowers, hair red as sunset, soft hands and rough ropes, a smile that hides betrayal, ruins and towers and musty books.

The babble of voices which began as nonsense and became meaning. Elspeth is there, brusque and uneasy but still kind. A boy with dark, quizzical eyes and a sudden smile whose name rings like a bell in her mind – _Matthew_.

And she is hate and need, desire and anguish, dizzy with euphoria and weeping with a hurt so deep that it devours all her words. Dragon knows now what she sought when she had wings and no memory. It was him. It was always him.

She does not know how long she is huddled there, curled in the sand, years older, years wiser, her gasps a thin echo of the tide.

_Mornir_, says an irritated voice. She jolts up, and nearly screeches at a pair of enormous amber eyes inches from her. Then she recognises them.

_Maruman_. The words burst from her. _I remember._

The striped head lowers: he butts her with his nose. _Of course. Only a foolish funaga would choose to forget. _He pauses and something like a purr rumbles in his throat_. Though you were a kitten. Even Maruman fled from bigger cats when he was a kitten._

She smiles, sadly. _I am not a kitten anymore, and I have had enough of running. I must go home. The Land waits for me._

_Not yet, Mornir,_ he sends. _Sharpen your claws before you stalk squeakers._

It is wise advice. The sort her mother might have given her, once. But she has already waited too long, left her kingdom to the whims of a monster.

Instead she lets the fire gleam in her eyes, the shadow of the dragon, and Maruman hisses, ears flat to his head. _Who needs claws when you can breathe fire?_

X - X - X - X - X

_Woman much missed, how you call to me, call to me_  
_Saying that now you are not as you were_

This hot red land has forged him. Matthew does not care about the scars that gleam on his back and arms, or what they say about him when they think he can't hear. Mad, some say, reckless, dangerous.

_You'll kill us all with your stupid notions_, one slave snarls at him. _Freedom? We'll see no freedom till our Queen comes back._

He wants to tell them that their queen is crownless and lifeless, locked in sleep. At first he could hardly believe that the Red Queen and Dragon were one, but now it seems to him entirely right and fitting. It is for her that he goes on; for her that he gathers knowledge and sabotages (oh-so carefully) his masters.

Time has only intensified his feelings. He channels his regret and his shame into rebellion; and his love...well, he tends that like a garden, the only thing that flourishes in this desert land. He pieces together his memories of her, seeing the determination in her eyes, the flash of her smile, the dozens of small kindnesses she did him without asking for anything in return.

One day, if the prophecy is right, she will return. And so he fights to free the land, because that is all he can offer her that will make him worthy.

His life becomes a constant routine. Heat and dust rule him. Ariel flits into his life like a meteor, shining and alien, and vanishes before Matthew can garner enough knowledge to use as a weapon. He goes down into the earth each day, and counts it a victory when he comes back. He finds old friends and new enemies. He lives on, and each day he fights to change the world, for her.

Sometimes, he dreams of the Land, and knows it to be true. He sees Dameon dressed strangely, talking with strangers. Rushton is imprisoned alone, shivering in some dark space. Elspeth is alone too, but by choice, out in the mountains.

But he never sees Dragon, though he aches for it. He sees enough of Obernewtyn to know she has awoken but remembers nothing, and despair seizes him, for that means he is forgotten too, and it is all hopeless.

Then one night, he lies down to sleep, and finds her.

X - X - X - X - X

_And how am I to carry to an alien planet  
What are almost tears, as though towards home..._

She wakes with Maruman tangled in her hair once more. When she tries to move him, he stalks away in a huff, muttering of _ungrateful kittens_.

She brushes out her hair, and looks at herself in the bowl of water that she washes with. Her blurry reflection could be her mother – she is not gone, entirely, Dragon realises, because she carries her in her skin, in her hair, in the bones of her body. The thought comforts her, softening the grief that is too fresh.

As if it is another day, as if she is still half-feral, she goes about her business. Gossip swirls about her. The rebels are here (though of course they are no longer rebels). There is to be a voyage, across the sea to the slavers' land. Elspeth will go – others too, though that is under discussion now...

Her hearts constricts. The chance will not come again, she suspects.

Brydda Llewellyn is in the hall, talking quietly with Rushton. He looks travel-weary, but when he sees her, his face light with a smile. He has always been kind, she thinks, always good at hiding his pain. "Little Dragon," he said fondly, standing at her approach.

Her memories have brought new instincts with them: she sweeps him a curtsey fresh from her mother's court, as if ten years have not passed. "Not so little any more, Brydda."

He frowns.

"I hear you are to travel to the Red Queen's land," she says. "I am going with you."

Rushton is staring now. It is undoubtedly the most articulate thing he has heard her say, but he recovers well. "Odd," he says coolly. "I was under the impression that the Guildmerge made these decisions."

She meets those green eyes. Others, she knows, find him intimidating. But she is an Empath, and she is well aware that this man is capable of love as fierce as fire. She remembers him, a tortured creature in a fortress of her making. "I am not asking as a member of a Guild."

"No?"

She holds her head high. "I am asking you as a queen separated from her throne, which was taken from her by treachery."

The silence is absolute. Rushton says very carefully, "This seems somewhat fantastical, Dragon."

"I do not doubt it." She steps closer, aware of her beauty, of her dignity, every lesson of court and kingdom thrumming in her veins. "But it is true, nonetheless. I am the daughter of the Red Queen. My mother was..." A lump rises in her throat and she ignores it. "She was murdered in front of me when I was a child. Ship fish carried me to the Land, but I forgot who I was."

"And you have remembered now?" says Brydda, very gentle.

"Test me," she replies, not to him but to Rushton. "Let the Healers look at me. And if they agree that I am sane, then let me go back to my home."

Belief is starting to dawn in his eyes. She wonders what, if anything, he recalls of her memories. He sighs and says, "Very well, Dragon." He hesitates. "Unless you want us to call you something else."

She had another name, but it belonged to an innocent little girl who believed that her mother was immortal. Not to a woman, who knows the touch of fire, the weight of shadows, the dizzying freefall of freedom.

"No," she says. "Dragon is right."

X - X - X - X - X

_But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you_  
_And loved the sorrows of your changing face_

She comes through the dreaming like a flame, her feet leaving no imprint in the dust. He sees her first on the horizon, a shimmering figure. He is dreaming of the quarry again, of the monster that squats in the darkness below, its toxic breath rumbling through the caverns.

The sky is so blue it hurts his eyes. Discarded tools lie around, the dull gleam of metal breaking through grime. All is empty and still as a grave. Except for her.

He has dreamed her before: it is no surprise to see her here. His heart aches at her presence, as it always does.

But as she comes closer, the details are not right. She is almost the same: almost, but not quite.

That is how he knows this is real.

And his words stick in his throat. They stare at each other: her beauty blazes under the hot sun, and he says, huskily, afraid, "Dragon?"

The air ripples like a mirage: she is poised like a deer on the edge of flight, and he throws out a hand which trembles. "Wait! Please – I...I willna hurt ye."

He has done that often enough, though, that the words come out tinged with shame.

Her voice is soft and disbelieving. "Matthew?"

"The same." He looks down at himself, calloused, scarred, tanned. "Well. Not the same at all, ye ken."

"That makes two of us." She smiles at his bemusement, but it is crooked and sad. "I remember who I am."

"The Red Queen," he says.

"You know, then." Her eyes travel his skin, soft and pitying. "They told me you were taken by slavers."

"Aye. Not long after ye – after I..." The words tumble out of him, a flood. "Lass, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry. The things I said to ye – I didna mean…I shouldna have said them. It were cruel, and it were stupid, and I were wrong. Every last bit of it, I were wrong."

She turns away, hugging herself. There is a vulnerability to her that has not changed. "Yes, you were."

"I dinna expect ye to forgive me," he says. "But I wanted ye to ken that...that..."

The words stutter into nothing on his tongue.

"That?" she says without turning, in a voice as flat as the sand.

"That I love ye," he says quietly.

Her laugh is soft and mirthless. "Like a fairytale princess, I suppose." But there is hurt under the words too: that flash of vulnerability, bright as her hair.

He thinks of the years that he has spent here. Of her face, carved on walls, of his memories, which have sustained him so long. "No," he says finally. "Not like that. I dinna reckon that a princess would throw herself in front of a pair of filthy children. After – after ye fell into that sleep, I couldna stop thinkin' of ye. I thought ye were a child, but ye weren't. And when ye were gone, everything was empty, after, and I realised that I wanted ye, that mebbe I had for a while, mebbe I didna want to call it love because I thought love were something else."

"Something civilised," she says.

He smiles, ruefully, thought she cannot see it. "Aye. That. But I learned better. I'm a slave, and I eat with me fingers and I go down into the dark every day and think mebbe it'll be me last, but it doesna make me less human." The distance between them seems miles; he has no hope, but he needs to make amends. It is all he can offer her. "And it doesna make me more worthy of ye. I ken that. But whatever ye need from me, ye shall have it."

Dragon turns back to him. She walks across the blistering sand in her bare feet as if does not burn her, as if she is half-flame herself, and perhaps that isn't so far from the truth. She belongs here, with her eyes as vast and blue as the sky, her steps liquid, light, barely leaving a trace.

When she stops in front of him, his heart is hammering. She reaches up: her fingers brush the scar beside his eye, the ridge of his broken cheekbone, the dent in his shoulder where a pick took a chunk out of him. Her fingers circle the marks on his wrist, a shackle he'd willingly wear, and echoes of her touch dance on his skin.

"You are different," she remarks, soft.

He is not what he was: easy, charming, handsome. "Aye."

Her eyes search his. "Whatever I need?"

"Anything."

"Even you?"

Time stops. He must have misheard. "I..."

"I love you, you see," she says, her voice husky. "I love your temper and your voice. I love your scars, because I know you got them doing something noble and selfless and probably very stupid. And I am coming back to my land, and I am going to ask you to fight with me. People will die. We might die. Forgiving you – forgiving you is hard. But not loving you would be even harder, and I think I might regret it forever."

He cups her face with hands that are not entirely steady. When he kisses her, it is soft, clumsy, sweet, slow. He is gentle, as if she's fragile, until she nips his bottom lip, drawing a gasp from him. And he remembers that this woman has survived the breaking of her kingdom and her mind and her heart, and her very name is fire and abandon.

Time slips away, as it does in dreams, in pieces and moments. Her hands in his hair, illusions swirling around them like smoke, skin on skin, heat and need and motion.

When at last they separate, they lean together, her forehead on his. There will be war and pain, dark roads to walk, he knows that. It is impossible in so many ways: they are both damaged. He is a slave and she is a queen.

"Wait for me," she whispers.

But it is also love. They own his time and his labour and even his skin, but not this, not his heart, which is irrevocably hers.

He reaches out: her mind is open, dazzling, golden as the sun.

_Always_, he promises. And when she smiles, although he is no Futureteller, the future stands clear before him. And Lud, oh, Lud, it is beautiful.

_As if the final estimate were hers  
And as it measured in her calipers  
The mountain stood exalted in its place  
So will love take between the hands a face..._

~* Fin *~

Comments & feedback very much adored - thanks for reading!

Quotes in this chapter:  
I. somewhere i have never travelled by e.e. cummings  
II. O Ancient Prisons by Radnoti  
III. The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock by TS Eliot  
IV. Death Shall Have No Dominion by Dylan Thomas  
V. The Voice by Thomas Hardy  
VI. No, I'm Not Afraid by Irina Ratushinskaya  
VII. When You Are Old by WB Yeats  
VIII. Moon Compasses by Robert Frost


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